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I think you guys have really nailed the format. I wouldn't mind seeing the word bubbles maybe 10% larger. The geography is a little confusing on this page. It's hard to tell where the soldiers are in relation to the family until the last panel.

I agree about making the word bubbles bigger. I keep trying to, but they keep ending up too small. I think subconsciously I'm trying not to cover up the art. I'll make these bigger and upload the new version in a bit.

Ok, I have uploaded the new page. You'll probably have to refresh your browser to see it. I made the word bubbles larger and moved the bubble in panel 4 down a little to hopefully improve the flow.

Nib, we've been planning where the bubbles go but it is tough since a lot of the time there is just a bunch of text to cram in. I don't help matters by making last minute changes to the script, either .

Hey Ken, there's kind of a broad design issue in your work that it kind of rubs me the wrong way, and I probably wouldn't bring it up if I thought these things were totally intentional, but I'm not really sure that that they are. The basic thing is that you appear to have a difficult time knowing when to simplify things for a stronger statement- not in the sense of making it more cartoony or less realistic, but being able to effectively emphasize that which strengthens the overall read, and de-emphasize that which hinders it.

A good place to see what I'm on about it how you're drawing your women, since drawing women effectively- especially ones that are supposed to look fairly attractive- relies a lot on being able to pare things down in a flattering way. (Note: I am in no way qualified to give anyone shit about how well they draw women considering how crap I am at it, but...) For example, in the two examples below you've put very hard edges indicating planar changes in the face- which is fine on an Asaro head, but not so great for drawing an attractive woman's head. Playing up the planar changes with hard edges will tend to age and make the woman look more masculine. By either softening the edges significantly, or eliminating them entirely, you'll end up with a much more feminine look. Look at some vintage black and white Hollywood actress photos sometime- you'd be hard pressed to find one where you'll find a lot of hard edged halftones.

This goes for the body as well- I can see exactly what you're trying to do with all the detail you've added to the second drawing- you want to show the scapula edging over the back, you want to show the deltoid and the biceps and the triceps and how the muscles of the forearm insert above the elbow, you want to show how the fabric is wrapping around the body- but all of these things are overemphasized, and getting in the way of the broader statement: attractive young woman, wearing a dress, proffering her hand. Drawing that means simple, graceful curves, not lots of anatomical detail.

That doesn't mean sacrificing realism, it means resorting your priorities in such a way as to be able to effectively use realism. If I told you I met a woman, and went on and one about the notable features of her musculature and skeletal landmarks, you'd assume she was a pretty fugly looking specimen, anorexic or a lady bodybuilder. If, on the other hand, I told you she had an hourglass figure, you'd assume she was pretty attractive- describing the same woman, I've given you two totally different impressions. The same is true in drawing- what you choose to tell the audience through your design is much more important than trying to cram in all you could possibly tell them.

Beyond just females, this is applies across the board- often I feel like the read of a body part or a pose is being sacrificed for the sake making sure the audience knows that you know your anatomy. Don't get me wrong, knowing anatomy is great, but it's not the end-all be-all that people make it out to be, and drawing as if it is is going to lead to problems.

I'm not sure if I know how to articulate this point all that clearly, but I feel like you tend to design your bodies as stick figures, with purely straight lines in between joints, and then expanding out some spherical-type muscles outwards from those lines. It achieves a certain sense of volume, yes- but this by itself tends to draw the eye outwards from a form, rather than down the main flow of a form. One of Erik's demos shows pretty well how to start with a sense of simple flow. These are ultra-simple quick sketches, yeah- but look at how he's designing the limbs there- not as a mass of muscles and bones, but as very simple curves and straights- establishing the flow that all subsequent anatomical detail will be subservient to, making sure the strength of the action will be preserved down the line. This isn't the only way to draw gesture, but I bring it up because understanding the principle behind it will help prevent your figures from becoming disjointed feeling.

Going even broader, this applies to your choice of posing. Looking at the pose above, I can't say that, rationally, there's anything wrong with it- it's a pose that's physically possible, you can tell what the action is, the anatomy's all in the right spots, he doesn't have 6 fingers or a nose on the side of his head or anything. You could go out and shoot a photograph of a guy doing that and it wouldn't be weird- heck you might have done just that to get reference. On that level, as a representation of something that could legitimately happen it's fine. However, as a design, it feels weak. Look how many times the gesture of the main action gets broken in yours- starting from the fireball, you've got it going downhill to the hand, a break at the hand to a slightly more downhill angle, uphill at the elbow, then a break at the elbow as the torso changes direction to the arm. These breaks in the action weaken the overall read.

Now in my redesign, there's one straight, simple gesture there- straight from the fireball, all the way down the arm to the opposite shoulder- it all locks together as a solid unit. The angle of the line or action gets reinforced by it being on the level with the perspective. Going down the rest of the figure, the legs are spread apart to form a slightly wide base, in line with the fireball- this kind of footing is the same kind used by boxers and martial artists, feet perpendicular to the opponent- it allows them to absorb the force of incoming blows without getting knocked off balance. Using it in this instance makes the blast feel more powerful by association, having the character need to brace against the force of the blast, rather than the blast being so weak that one wouldn't get enough of the 'equal and opposite reaction' from it to even tip a guy off balance in a front on pose.

Now, like I said, this is all stuff that maybe you've got good reasons for disagreeing with, and aren't designing things in this way for those reasons, and I'm just not really convinced as of yet your design decisions are coming from a place of deliberate reasoning versus coming from just a comfortable default. I could see an argument to be made for trying to get far away from standard Fantasy Art Glamour and Shiny Things and Sexy Boobs and Glowy Shit look in your fantasy story, but if that's the case, that idea isn't coming across to me immediately, and could be pushed further in the opposite direction.

In any case, just something to think about, grain of salt and all that.

Angel_of_Bacon, your comments are very thorough and appreciated. I can't speak for Kenny, but I told him to minimize the "coolness" factor of the first few magic/action scenes so that later ones look more impressive by comparison (and so you can see that personal growth has occurred). I don't know if this played any role in his decision to pose the characters the way he did, though.

That galaxy piece is super deluxe too. If I had one crit about it, it would be that the curve of the river that happens behind the figure kinda irks me. Without being able to see that curve it kinda looks like the trail is going into his chest and coming out of his mouth.

Its pretty minor though as I knew it wasn't doing that, but it just sorta stuck out to me.

Again, (sorry to harp on about this), hard edges and lines + woman's face = gonna look weird. Even for an older woman, it's easier to start from a young woman's face and then add subtle details to age her, than to start with emphasized details, which masculinizes any face, and then try to pull it back to looking feminine. It takes very little doing to age a woman's face by decades in a drawing.

Which is sort of another issue in itself- the same character, 2 pages ago, looks significantly younger and thinner in the face there than she does in this panel- if I had to guess, she went from about 37 to 62 during her walk across town. What was the difference two pages ago? It still had hard edges, just those were mostly just between shadow and light- very little in the way of half-tone detail, anatomy and wrinkles. Here you've got a lot of half-tone detail, so she gets all weathered looking. If you want that, ok, she might be intended to be somewhat old- but keep it consistent.

Paintover- I know it's totally unfair to compare what can be done digitally versus what can be done in watercolor in terms of flexibility, but bear with me. If nothing else you might consider pre-wetting the area of the faces to get a smooth blend across the whole of the face, before dealing with the features and details.

I'm guessing the first one is too young, and the second one too old (though roughly the same as what I'd guess the age in this particular panel would be), but I did it this way just to show how easy it is to age someone with details.